The Countess of Charny; or, The Execution of King Louis XVI

"You have a lot of clumsy friends, madame. I could tell you of some who would serve you better."

An hour afterward all the mob had flowed away, and the king, accompanied by his sister, entered the room where the queen and his children awaited him.

She ran to him and threw herself at his feet, while the children seized his hands, and all acted as though they had been saved from a shipwreck. It was only then that the king noticed that he was wearing the red cap.

"Faugh!" he said; "I had forgotten!"

Snatching it off with both hands, he flung it far from him with disgust.

The evacuation of the palace was as dull and dumb as the taking had been gleeful and noisy. Astonished at the little result, the mob said:

"We have not made anything; we shall have to come again."

In fact, it was too much for a threat, and not enough for an attempt on the king's life.

Louis had been judged on his reputation, and recalling his flight to Varennes, disguised as a serving-man, they had thought that he would hide under a table at the first noise, and might be done to death in the scuffle, like Polonius behind the arras.

Things had happened otherwise; never had the monarch been calmer, never so grand. In the height of the threats and the insults he had not ceased to say: "Behold your king!"

The Royalists were delighted, for, to tell the truth, they had carried the day.

CHAPTER VI.

"THE COUNTRY IS IN DANGER!"

The king wrote to the Assembly to complain of the violation of his residence, and he issued a proclamation to "his people." So it appeared there were two peoples – the king's, and those he complained of.

On the twenty-fourth, the king and queen were cheered by the National Guards, whom they were reviewing, and on this same day, the Paris Directory suspended Mayor Petion, who had told the king to his face that the city was not riotous.

Whence sprung such audacity?

Three days after, the murder was out.

Lafayette came to beard the Assembly in its House, taunted by a member, who had said, when he wrote to encourage the king in his opposition and to daunt the representatives:

"He is very saucy in the midst of his army; let us see if he would talk as big if he stood among us."

He escaped censure by a nominal majority – a victory worse than a defeat.

Lafayette had again sacrificed his popularity for the Royalists.

He cherished a last hope. With the enthusiasm to be kindled among the National Guards by the king and their old commander, he proposed to march on the Assembly and put down the Opposition, while in the confusion the king should gain the camp at Maubeuge.

It was a bold scheme, but was almost sure in the state of minds.

Unfortunately, Danton ran to Petion at three in the morning with the news, and the review was countermanded.

Who had betrayed the king and the general? The queen, who had said she would rather be lost than owe safety to Lafayette.

She was helping fate, for she was doomed to be slain by Danton.

But supposing she had less spite, and the Girondists might have been crushed. They were determined not to be caught napping another time.

It was necessary to restore the revolutionary current to its old course, for it had been checked and was running up-stream.

The soul of the party, Mme. Roland, hoped to do this by rousing the Assembly. She chose the orator Vergniaud to make the appeal, and in a splendid speech, he shouted from the rostrum what was already circulating in an under-tone:

"The country is in danger!"

The effect was like a waterspout; the whole House, even to the Royalists, spectators, officials, all were enveloped and carried away by this mighty cyclone; all roared with enthusiasm.

That same evening Barbaroux wrote to his friend Rebecqui, at Marseilles:

"Send me five hundred men eager to die."

On the eleventh of July, the Assembly declared the country to be in danger, but the king withheld his authorization until the twenty-first, late at night. Indeed, this call to arms was an admission that the ruler was impotent, for the nation would not be asked to help herself unless the king could or would do nothing.

Great terror made the palace quiver in the interval, as a plot was expected to break out on the fourteenth, the anniversary of the taking of the Bastile – a holiday.

Robespierre had sent an address out from the Jacobin Club which suggested regicide.

So persuaded was the Court party, that the king was induced to wear a shirt of mail to protect him against the assassin's knife, and Mme. Campan had another for the queen, who refused to don it.

"I should be only too happy if they would slay me," she observed, in a low voice. "Oh, God, they would do me a greater kindness than Thou didst in giving me life! they would relieve me of a burden!"

Mme. Campan went out, choking. The king, who was in the corridor, took her by the hand and led her into the lobby between his rooms and his son's, and stopping, groped for a secret spring; it opened a press, perfectly hidden in the wall, with the edges guarded by the moldings. A large portfolio of papers was in the closet, with gold coin on the shelves.

The case of papers was so heavy that the lady could not lift it, and the king carried it to her rooms, saying that the queen would tell her how to dispose of it. She thrust it between the bed and the mattress, and went to the queen, who said:

"Campan, those are documents fatal to the king if he were placed on trial, which the Lord forbid. Particularly – which is why, no doubt, he confides it all to you – there is a report of a council, in which the king gave his opinion against war; he made all the ministers sign it, and reckons on this document being as beneficial in event of a trial as the others may be hurtful."

The July festival arrived. The idea was to celebrate the triumph of Petion over the king – that of murdering the latter not being probably entertained.

Suspended in his functions by the Assembly, Petion was restored to them on the eve of the rejoicings.

At eleven in the morning, the king came down the grand staircase with the queen and the royal children. Three or four thousand troops, of unknown tendencies, escorted them. In vain did the queen seek on their faces some marks of sympathy; the kindest averted their faces.

There was no mistaking the feeling of the crowd, for cheers for Petion rose on all sides. As if, too, to give the ovation a more durable stamp than momentary enthusiasm, the king and the queen could read on all hats a lettered ribbon: "Petion forever!"

The queen was pale and trembling. Convinced that a plot was aimed at her husband's life, she started at every instant, fancying she saw a hand thrust out to bring down a dagger or level a pistol.

On the parade-ground, the monarch alighted, took a place on the left of the Speaker of the House, and with him walked up to the Altar of the Country. The queen had to separate from her lord here to go into the grand stand with her children; she stopped, refusing to go any further until she saw how he got on, and kept her eyes on him.

At the foot of the altar, one of those rushes came which is common to great gatherings. The king disappeared as though submerged.

The queen shrieked, and made as if to rush to him; but he rose into view anew, climbing the steps of the altar.

Among the ordinary symbols figuring in these feasts, such as justice, power, liberty, etc., one glittered mysteriously and dreadfully under black crape, carried by a man clad in black and crowned with cypress. This weird emblem particularly caught the queen's eyes. She was riveted to the spot, and, while encouraged a little by the king's fate, she could not take her gaze from this somber apparition. Making an effort to speak, she gasped, without addressing any one specially: